Today is the last day for my boss/supervisor, where i currently work. He has almost 20 years with our current company and has decided to not take the offer of the incoming company for our contract. I understand why, but i am not happy about his leaving. These things are facts of life. I have been very grateful for him as he 'saved' me from a bad job situation. When i came off of active duty in 2003 my employer informed me that i would be moved to the swing shift. When i told my then boss that was not really a good thing for me i was told i had 30 days to find another position/job or i would be moved. I told them that i had just spent a year away from my kids and that this would ensure i would only get to see them on the weekends. They response, "we have kids too". *sigh*
Well, i was really bummed when my current boss "happened" upon my cube. He was looking for the one of the PC guys to set up his "new" laptop (he was being brought off of being laid off for the contract we are currently on). We got to talking and he encouraged me to apply for one of the seven positions he had coming open. Although in the end i took a 20% hit in my wallet (10% for the loss of the shift differential i would have had, and a 10% base pay cut) i have never regretted it. I now work a little over 8 miles from home, and more importantly i am home in the evenings with my family. I don't handle change very well, and i am not handling this well. He will be missed.
I have mentioned before that four times a year i become a tennis widower for two weeks.
Well yesterday my beloved was trying to watch some tennis. At four different times during the day she turned on the tennis coverage (both on
ESPN and the
Tennis channel), and each time they were either showing live, or a replay of, Serena Williams' match where she was eliminated by Svetlana Kuznetsova. I know she is the last American in the SLAM event, and i know she is #2 in the world, but there were some other matches that really good that we wanted to watch too! I mean come on! Every time matches were shown, literally all day yesterday, the only match we were able to watch was the Serena match.
Today was the third day of getting back to the gym after taking the last 6 months off. Basically i was too lazy to get back. Well, i am paying the price for it now. My knees were killing me after from before when i would run as part of the regimen, so i asked them to take the running off and replace it with the elliptical.
Now, i don't know who invented that particular torture device but it is a killer. I only use it for 10 minutes at a time, maintaining 110 rpm for the time. When i am done my legs feel like jello, but overall i like it. I miss running though. I am one of the few people that actually enjoy it. My dad got me hooked on it when i was really young. We lived in Brooklyn at the time and he was having to get himself healthy so he took the whole family on early morning runs in Prospect Park. Although i gave him a hard time about getting up early and running i think it planted a seed for me later in life. He eventually left me, my brother and step-mother at home and kept it up for a long time. When i was in high School i decided to go out for Cross Country... the first day the coach took us on a 12 mile job, then to the track for 8 sets of wind sprints (another 2 miles where you sprint the straight aways and jog the corners on a quarter mile track typically around the football field), then we did 8 sets of "hills" (a fairly steep hill beside the school about 100 yards long. I nearly died... but i was back out there the next day and stayed with it - right up until the team went to the state championships where i dropped out of the team (a theme of my life). When i am in shape (and about 20 to 30 pounds lighter) i love to just get up and go out running. If you ever seen the movie with Mel Gibson, "What Women Want", the scene where they pitch the ad campaign for women's Nike... the thoughts on what it's like to be out running is pretty much it... well, except from a masculine point of view of course. 8)
Recently i found out that the author of a blog i frequent (
Semper Reformunda) plays a tabletop game called
Battletech. Man that took me back. I love that game. I found out he plays with some others at his church some Sunday nights.
I would love to meet up with him and play a game or two some time. My all time favorite Mech was the Warhammer (pictured left). In game terms it's not really all that great. Prone to over heating, and poor short range options, but it has good armor and has a great look. Unfortunately the original producers of the game took some license with some images from the Japanese Manga - Robotech and lost a lawsuit and use of the images. Several computer and console games have been spawned from this game series, but i never got into the those games because i've never really been that good at hand-eye coordination games. Anyway... enough rambling for today...
first introduction to the Tolkien-like elves was when i was in High School. I was a new kid, but got invited to play Dungeons and Dragons. The first time i played i had never even heard of an Elf or a Dwarf, let alone Lord of the Rings. As a matter a fact, i was just a social oddity and not the proud geek writing before you today.
My first impression was one of mystery. Dwarves came across as gruff, grumpy, and loved Beer - no, nope. Gnomes, please. Halflings, well, they seemed small, timid. Orcs (well, players could play a half-breed version), were uncouth, rude, and barbaric. Elves on the other hand came across as elegant, sleek, stealthy. My
new friends tolerated the tons of questions i threw at them. Eventually the 'threw' Tolkien back at me and encouraged me to read it. Being my slothful self, i didn't (not yet anyway). I continued to ask questions about them, etc. Then as my interests drifted to other games, etc. i tried other slants, other races, but with only a few exceptions, i found myself always coming back to play elves.
Since then, i have continued to read about various 'incarnations' of Elves - almost exclusively of the Tolkien-like variety. Fairies and sprites type 'elves' interest me very little. I am thankful for elves because of their longevity, their apparent immortality, their love of music and desire to study whatever catches their fancy with complete focus, and when they have learned all they desire on that subject they look for something else. And i like their desire to be a peaceful race (in general), but if it comes to it, they are capable of defending themselves and their friends admirably.
All of this is fantasy of course, but just like most of the heroes of old, they are but legend, flights of fancy. I am thankful that Elves lift my thoughts above the drudgery of the mundane and give me something to aspire to, if nothing more than an in a general sort of way because, obviously, i will ever yet be human.
